Introduction to Business

Introduction

Every business organisation is involved in selling and buying goods to meet the

requirements of their target customers with good quality and standard. There are multiple

organisations in the UK which provides their services and products to the customers and

clients. Within the organisation or company, several methodologies and hierarchies are

followed to make effective management, communication and relationships. The deployment

and implementations of methodologies are discussed in this assessment and impact of

different leadership and management styles on the company, employees and customers. The

management and leadership styles are adopted as per the nature of the business and strategic

plans (Mikkelson, York and Arritola. 2015)

Smith Brothers

Smith Brothers is a multi-million organisation which mainly provides their services in

power engineering. The company works as a contractor in power supply field and provide

cabling, installation and complete power lines maintenance services (Smithbrothersltd.co.uk,

2019).

Functional Areas

Smith Brothers is providing their services in several areas of power and energy in UK

and also is other countries. Their services are contract base and can be provided in remote

areas (Smithbrothersltd.co.uk, 2019).

Capacity management
 The company offers multiple services in Capacity Management like installation of

grid connections, embedded network supply, electric flow optimisation, civil constructions

for electrical devices, testing and network operations. Maintenance is also provided to the

customers for their services.

Offshore

The company has also a wide experience of working in offshore. They provide

services of jointing, connection, termination, transformer and switchgear services for the oil

rigs in offshore.

Commercial and Industrial

Cost-effective and flexible electrical infrastructure installation can be done by “Smith

Brothers”

Water treatment

In case of emergency, fault and outage on the water plants, backup is provided by the

organisation.

Renewables

Secure, reliable and cost effective installation services of electricity generating panels

are also provided with complete testing and execution.

Managing Hierarchy of Smith Brothers

 Like every other organisation, the management and operations are divided into

hierarchy according to the relevant skills of problem solving. Every designation is somehow

concerned with another one and have collaborative working style.

Managing Director

Managing Director is responsible for the performance and outcomes of the company

and leads all the operations within the organisation. To develop an efficient and fruitful

strategy for future projects is also a basic duty of a managing director.

Joint Managing Director

Joint managing director shares the duties of Managing Director, and assist them in

every strategic move. Mostly, commercial strategies are overviewed by the joint managing

director.

Finance Director

All the budgeting and day-to-day assistance regarding to the finance of the company

is done by the finance director.

Operations Director

Duty of operation director is to oversee and deliver the orders to the commercial team

and workload management.

Commercial Director
 Consistent and trajectory growth of the organisation is managed by the commercial

director. There can be other departments to be overseen by the commercial director according

to the order’s requirements.

Tendering Manager

Duties of tendering include review of orders, tender preparation and procurement of

pricing. All the tenders of projects are reviewed and passed by tendering manager.

Operation Manager

Operation manager have to ensure safe, smooth and efficient delivery of all projects

and services by overseeing the collective team of all project managers. Setting training and

hiring procedures is also a part of operation manager’s duty.

Principal Electrical and Design Engineer

The design and principal electrical engineer manages the architecture, design, and

working of the industrial machines. Ensuring the smooth and proper working of machines

and their maintenance is also a job responsibility of “Design and Principal Electrical

Engineer”.

Senior Office Manager

Job responsibilities of senior office manager includes the management of shipping,

mailing, maintenance and bills. Coordination between departments and organising office

operations are the part of duties of Senior Office Manager.

Business Development Manager

 Job description of BDM is to help the business for its growth in sales and revenues

with their extra ordinary skills. The manager also processes financial data of the company.

Communication in Leadership and Management

Communication in leadership is encouraging for the group or an individual and a

great aspect for the sharing of important information. The three basic aspects of leadership

communication are corporate, managerial and core but the communication between

leadership and management is the most important requirement for the successful

collaborative working. Training, formal meetings and mentoring are the essential concepts

for the managerial and leadership communication by which the motivation, dedication and

professionalism of management team can be enhanced and built a strong relationship of trust

and reliability between the leadership and management (Ruben and Gigliotti. 2016). For the

management and leadership, good skills of communication is necessary because the exchange

of thoughts and ideas should have to be considerable and understandable for both.

Misunderstanding of messages and information can cause a damage or tends to make wrong

decision. Cultural, behavioural and environmental differences among the leadership,

management and the employees can cause difference in understanding of the same message

or information by which chances of misconceptions are increased. To overcome these

differences, the communication should be frequent and regular with proper attention. For

effective communication, “How we say” is more important than “What we say” because the

message and information should meet the understanding of the listener (Ruben and Gigliotti.

2016)

Examples of Interdepartmental Communication

 Effective and responsive communication is essential for an organisation to provide

good services to their consumers. Interdepartmental communication is a practice in which

two or more than two departments of company share their messages, ideas and pass orders

according to the present need (Lezovitskaya and Weerakit. 2017).

Examples

Scenario-1: Consider a super store in which there comes a customer who bought a T-

shirt but due to some defects on it, he wants to exchange it with another one. Firstly, he came

to the salesman for this and salesman refer him to the operation manager and he e-mailed the

barcode of shirt and issue to the manager. For resolving the issue of valued customer, sales

department communicate to the operation department via e-mail.

Scenario-2: In reputable logistics company, two employees of finance department had

a conflict between them due to some personal issues, the finance manager mailed the

complete situation to the HR manager and in response, HR manager suspends one of them

after hearing from them as the culprit was breaching the ethical laws of the company.

Types of Globalisation Drivers

Drivers

Drivers are the changing factors of industries which is associated with the growth and

expansion of services and products of industries (Ivanov, Ivanove. 2016).

Technological Drivers and its Impact

For modern globalisation, proper shape and foundation is set by the technology. The

industry is revolutionised by the latest innovations in technology of transport. Concepts of

containerisation and commercial jet aircrafts are the important developments done between

1970 to 1980. Highly effective and efficient communication and computing is enabled at very
low cost due to the inventions in the field of telecommunication and microprocessors.

Frequent growth of internet and latest technological drivers established global e-commerce or

e-business. Technological drivers may offer opportunities, risks and threats to the business

which helps to improve business processes and products (Ivanov, Ivanove. 2016).

Political Drivers and its Impact

Globally, direct foreign investments are allowed by deregulated market and

liberalised rules of trading. “General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade” GATT and “World

Trade Organisation” are development examples (Sondergaard, Oehmen and Ahmed. 2016).

Cost Drivers and its Impact

Efficiency of cost and sources may be variable in different countries of which

multinational companies take great advantage. Cost drivers on globalisation are opportunities

for economies scale building and for “Product Development Cost”. These drivers can bring

an immediate change in cost of an activity or product (Sondergaard, Oehmen and Ahmed.

2016).

Competitive Drivers

Competitive drivers increase the competing aspect between organisations and led

them to work internationally. Strong business relations among countries and trade forums are

formed through this driver. The impact of this driver on the industries is that the organisations

are keenly observing their competitors and their product activities (Sondergaard, Oehmen and

Ahmed. 2016).

Market Drivers
 Domestic markets are now too much saturated by which their growth is become so

limited, and the only way for their growth is to expand them globally because common

consumers are preferring the channels which are known globally. Market Drivers comes up

with the thought of upbringing the businesses to the international market and approaching to

the international consumers for their services and products (Reese et., al 2018).

Though, there are many other drivers which are functioning in industries depending

on their service areas. These drivers can have positive or negative impact on the industries

but by them, potential of approaching big markets and evolution of the products are the key

outcomes of these globalisation drivers.

Leadership

Leadership is all about motivating a team or a group for achieving a goal which is

common among all of them. For business, leadership means to direct the colleagues with

company strategies for meeting the needs of an organisation. In short, a good leader should

be an inspiration for their team or group (Lezovitskaya and Weerakit. 2017).

Types of Leadership or Management

Autocratic Leadership and Management

In Autocratic leadership, a leader centralised his/her powers and authorities and all

decision making to himself only. All the orders, assigning and tasks are given without

consulting with their employees. Complete authority and responsibility is possessed by the

leader. Autocratic Leadership too much negative as it is based on the punishments and

threats. Subordinates just acts like they are directing but they never cares for the decisions

and opinions of the workers because of the belief that only he know the best things for the

company (Hermosilla, Amutio, Costa and Paez. 2016).

 Close supervision and clear commanding are the base of the Autocratic Leadership in

which immediate decisions are prompt actions with unit direction is required. Employees just

work hard to avoid punishments and burdens by which there production might reduce.

The three divided classes of autocratic leadership and management are:

1-An autocrat who just relies on force fear, punishment and negative influences. Resentful

attitude of employees will be the outcome of this.

2-Relying on reward and incentives on achieving target or goal, makes the positive image of

that autocrat.

3-The manipulative autocrat, makes employees to feel like that decisions are making with

their advices though the decisions are already taken by the manager but encourage the

colleagues for participating in any decision making step (Hermosilla, Amutio, Costa and

Paez. 2016).

Democratic or Participative Leadership

Authorities are decentralised by the democratic leaders which is established with the

participation of co-workers and subordinates. The participation of employees in decision

making is always encouraged by the leader. Subordinates are always leaded with persuasion

rather than any kind of fear of punishment or burden of work. The leader is also a moderator

of ideas and thoughts sometimes for his/her group or team by which enthusiasm is fostered in

workers and they feel like the management is keen interested in their thoughts and value

them(Hermosilla, Amutio, Costa and Paez. 2016).

Leaders known the specific inability of any specific worker, they assist their workers

on that tasks and mostly assign them tasks which matches the ability of worker.

Comparison of Leadership Outcomes

Autocratic Leadership

Few or no ideas or thoughts are contributed by the workers. Lower the morale of

workers and discourage them by which the efficiency of outcome and results reduces. Leader

and the company is getting disliked by the employees and sustainability of worker start

lacking (Hermosilla, Amutio, Costa and Paez. 2016).

Democratic Leadership

The workers get higher level of motivation from their leader and their co-ordination is

increased among colleagues, management and leaders which makes their performance

efficient and result oriented.

For modern Global organisations, democratic leadership style is better and reliable as

this provide basic ethics of work and encourage new comers for their business (Hermosilla,

Amutio, Costa and Paez. 2016). More chances of learning and exposure are provided under

democratic participative leadership.

Conclusion

In every decent organisation, there is a proper hierarchy of designations with relevant

skilled individuals are set for business purpose and all the hierarchy is always in

communication with each other, as effective and efficient collaboration is necessary for

successful management. A good leadership and management is essential for every business

organisation because only a decent leadership can bring success to the company with the

assistance of their valued employees. There are several internal and external organisational

drivers with different aspects and their aspects may or may not depends on the type of

industry and region etc.

Mikkelson, A.C., York, J.A. and Arritola, J., 2015. Communication competence, leadership

behaviors, and employee outcomes in supervisor-employee relationships. Business and

Professional Communication Quarterly, 78(3), pp.336-354.

Ruben, B.D. and Gigliotti, R.A., 2016. Leadership as social influence: An expanded view of

leadership communication theory and practice. Journal of Leadership & Organizational

Studies, 23(4), pp.467-479.

Carroll, C.E. ed., 2015. The handbook of communication and corporate reputation (Vol. 49).

John Wiley & Sons.

White, C.M., 2016. Social media, crisis communication, and emergency management:

Leveraging Web 2.0 technologies. CRC press.

Lozovitskaya, Y. and Weerakit, N., 2017. Factors Influencing Effectiveness of

Interdepartmental Communication in Hospitality Industry: A case Study of 4-5 Star Hotel

Employees in Phuket. Journal of International Studies, Prince of Songkla University, 7(1),

pp.118-139.

(Lezovitskaya and Weerakit. 2017)

Reese, J., Lewandowski, K.M., Rick, A.M., Brockel, M., Kulungowski, A. and Hyman, D.,

2018. Improving Interdepartmental Handoff Communication Between the Medical,

Anesthesia, and Surgical Teams to Prevent Patient Harm-A Quality Improvement Study.

(Reese et., al 2018)

Søndergaard, E., Oehmen, J. and Ahmed-Kristensen, S., 2016. Extension of

internationalisation models: drivers and processes for the globalisation of product

development–a comparison of Danish and Chinese engineering firms. Production Planning

& Control, 27(13), pp.1112-1123.

(Sondergaard, Oehmen and Ahmed. 2016)

Ivanov, S. and Ivanova, M., 2016. Do hotel chains stimulate globalisation?. Tourism

Management Perspectives, 19, pp.102-108.

Hermosilla, D., Amutio, A., Da Costa, S. and Páez, D., 2016. Transformational leadership in

organizations&58; Mediating variables and long-term consequences. Revista de Psicología

del Trabajo y de las Organizaciones, 32(3), pp.135-143.

(Hermosilla, Amutio, Costa and Paez. 2016)

Nielsen, P.A., Boye, S., Holten, A.L., Jacobsen, C.B. and Andersen, L.B., 2017. Are

Transformational and Transactional Types of Leadership Compatible? A Panel Study of

Work Motivation. In IRSPM-conference, Corvinus University, Budapest.

Retrieved from:

Smithbrothersltd.co.uk. (2019). Electrical High Voltage Engineering Contractors - UK -

Smith Brothers Contracting Ltd. [online] Available at: https://www.smithbrothersltd.co.uk/

[Accessed 19 Feb. 2019].